SARAH GANCHER
PLAYWRIGHT
Current
>>Creating a new site-specific epic with director/designer Jared Mezzocchi
Co-commission from The Vineyard and En Garde Arts
>>Participating in Erik Ehn's silent Stillwrights Retreat, July 2022
>>Dorset Theater Festival Residency, August 2022
working on new bluegrass musical Eugene Onegin
as librettist, composer and lyricist
with director Jade King Carroll
>>Russian Troll Farm live in-person production at Geva Theatre's 50th Anniversary Season
February—March 2023
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
In association with Dori Bernstein
>>Developing Russian Troll Farm for television
as a half-hour animated comedy
with Bill Prady's Pine Tree Entertainment
>>Radio play with jazz I Could Get a Man
commissioned by Playwrights Horizons for their series Soundstage's Season 2
directed by Jade King Carroll
>> Workshop of new musical Rutka
with composers Jocelyn MacKenzie and Jeremy Lloyd Styles of Pearl and the Beard
and dramaturg Ken Cerniglia
Fall 2022
>>Curator for Space on Ryder Farm's Family Residency, Summer 2022
>>Also working on:
- new musical Maestro with Ben Wexler, commissioned by Grove/Whitman
- new musical The Hustler and the Nun with Andrew Bancroft, commissioned by Araca
- Soomi Kim's dance-theater-gymnastics opus about abuse, cancel culture, and reconciliation, The Body Through Which the Dream Flows
at Ice Factory Festival, Summer 2022
>>Featured on the Broadway Women's Fund 2022 Women to Watch on Broadway list
>> Featured on Articulate with James Cotter on PBS
Episode: Sarah Gancher / The Funny Thing About Grief
>>Selected Teaching, 2021-2022:
- Grad Masterclass in Comedy (Screen and Stage), NYU Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing Teaching
- Story (grad class about dramatic structure onstage and on screen) at The New School for Drama
- Collaborative Making Process (acting/writing/directing grad class) at The New School for Drama
- Play II (BFA) at NYU Department of Dramatic Writing
Recent
>> Winner of the James Stevenson Prize for Comedy from NPR's Playing on Air
Radio play Tech Demons commissioned by NPR's Playing on Air
Directed by Marc Bruni
with Isaac Oliver and Jay O Sanders
Listen here
>>Russian Troll Farm live in-person production at Forward Theatre in Madison, WI
April—May 2022
Directed by Jennifer Uphoff Gray
with Casem AbuLughod, Cassandra Bissell, Sarah Day, Scott Haden, and Andrew Rathgeber
Sets: Christopher Dunham
Lights: Noele Stollmack
Costumes: Ren LaDassor
Sound / Music Composition: Joe Cerqua
Projections: Kathy Wittman
Legendary progressive journalist John Nichols writes about the production here
>>Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy made the New York Times' Best Theater of 2020 list
>>Russian Troll Farm Press:
- NPR's All Things Considered
- Al Jazeera's news podcast The Take
- NY Times Critics' Pick:
"Gancher's play is so urgent, smart, and chewy. No wonder the presenting institutions—TheaterWorks Hartford and TheaterSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., in association with the Brooklyn-based Civilians—came together... to mount the complicated production before the election. I'm glad they did: "Russian Troll Farm" is one of the first new full-length plays I've seen since theater moved online that is rewarding as a text, makes the most of excellent actors and approaches full engagement with the new, hybrid form..." —Jesse Green, New York Times
>> Head writer for Blue Man Group, Summer 2021
>> New short film created with director Ellie Heyman
funded generously by a NYSCA grant (via WP Theater)
>> Spring 2021: Commissioned to write a major new work by Dorset Theater Festival
>>Named a member of the 2020-2021 Orchard Project Greenhouse lab
>>Online production of Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy
Extended again until Jan 14
a site-specific performance for the internet
co-directed by Jared Mezzocchi and Elizabeth Williamson
Set/Costumes: Brenda Abbandolo
Lights: Amith Chandrashaker
Sound: Andre Pluess
With Danielle Slavick, Greg Keller, Ian Lassiter, Haskell King and Mia Katigbak
Presented by Theaterworks Hartford, TheaterSquared, and The Civilians
Live online performances October 20—24
>>Spring 2020: Play At Home commission from Playwrights Realm: Fill in the Play
a theatrical experiment: mad lib meets improv game meets play
Fill out the form and a PDF of a one-of-a-kind play will be automatically emailed to you.
>>Spring 2020: Watch new play for 24 Hour Plays : Toilet Paper Kayak starring Becky Ann Baker and Dylan Baker
Recent (Pre-Pandemic)
>>Mission Drift named one of The Guardian's Top 50 Theater Shows of the 21st Century, Sept 2019
written with The TEAM and Heather Christian, directed by Rachel Chavkin
>>The Lucky Ones wins the 2019 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre
written with The Bengsons, directed by Anne Kauffman, choreography by Sonya Tayeh
>>Hundred Days published/licensed through Broadway Licensing
Hundred Days cast album released on Ghostlight Records
written with The Bengsons, directed by Anne Kauffman, choreography by Sonya Tayeh
>>Hundred Days on tour
Japanese Production, spring 2020 (canceled mid-run due to COVID-19)
at the Straz Center in Tampa, Jan 15 — March 24, 2019
at Miami's Arsht Center, April 10 — April 21, 2019
at La Jolla Playhouse, September 22 — October 21, 2018
>>Working with Cirque du Soleil on a new circus
>> Working with Madison Square Garden on a new large-scale spectacle
>>Grove/Whitman Commissioning Program Showcase, excerpt from Maestro, music and lyrics by Ben Wexler,
at Signature Theatre, October 21, 2019
>>Closed Reading of a The Place We Built at New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Danya Taymor, October 22, 2019
>>Reading of Five Mothers at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC
directed by Joshua Kahan Brody
April 9, 2019 @ 7 pm
including discussion with Hungarian scholar, activist, and organizer Eszter Súsan
,